


First Time for Everything

by silver_fish



Series: fluff bingo! [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Background Jily, Baking, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23994724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_fish/pseuds/silver_fish
Summary: As Harry's first birthday approaches, James grows increasingly stressed about the fact that Lily has put him in charge of preparing a cake—and he has never, not once, baked in his life. Luckily, his best mates are there to help him out.
Relationships: Sirius Black & Remus Lupin & Peter Pettigrew & James Potter
Series: fluff bingo! [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647298
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32
Collections: Writing Squad Fluff Bingo





	First Time for Everything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blushymika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blushymika/gifts).



> [twitter](https://twitter.com/laphicets) / [tumblr](https://kohakhearts.tumblr.com)
> 
> i actually wrote most of this like a month ago but for some reason stopped? LOL. well, anyway this was super fun!!!! i don't write these guys often enough considering how high they actually are on my faves list (james potter loveclub over here for real) so i enjoyed this a lot!~ for my fluff bingo card: "baking" + the marauders. i hope you enjoy!!!

According to Lily, it is a _simple task_.

At first, James thought so too. How hard could it be? His mum used to bake him cakes for _his_ birthday every year, and she was hardly a professional. It’s the only thing Lily has put him in charge of; she’ll send out invites and decorate and buy the perfect gift, apparently. As for James, he just has to bake one measly little cake. Easy.

But now he’s not so sure.

Sirius sits at the kitchen table with nearly-one-year-old Harry cradled in his arms and watches critically as James gathers all the things he thinks ought to go in a cake. Once in a while, he’ll call out, “Don’t think that’s right, mate,” and James will concede and put the thing away. Eventually, they come up with a list of likely cake ingredients that Sirius approves of, and then James realizes that now he has to put them all _together_.

“Why don’t you just ask Lily?” Sirius finally asks. “I mean, she’s good at this stuff, isn’t she? You have ‘til tomorrow. She could help you out tonight, couldn’t she?”

James stares at him. “Are you mental? I can’t just— She gave me _one_ job! And, just so you know, I’m not one of those lazy, good-for-nothing husbands who sit around and let the woman do everything. My mother taught me better than that!”

Sirius snorts. “Oh, yeah, ‘cause you never do _anything_ , Prongs. What, do you give her foot rubs when she gets home?”

“Well…”

“You totally do!” Carefully, so as to not disturb the baby, he gets to his feet and enters the kitchen. “ _You’re_ the mental one. Your house is way too clean for someone our age. Anyway, if you’re so concerned about it, owl Moony. He knows everything, so he’ll probably know how to do this too. Don’t you think?”

Slowly, James nods. “I suppose… You think he’s free?”

Sirius lifts one hand to give it a dismissive wave. “Tell him it’s for Harry here and he will be.”

James glances at the various bags and jars lined up on the counter and lets out a sigh. “Yeah, all right, suppose you’re right. Wait here, then.”

“‘Course I’m right,” Sirius calls after him as he heads into the next room to hunt down some parchment and a quill.

Once he does, he pens out a quick S.O.S. message, then heads upstairs to get to their mail owl, Snowball—rather, Sirius’s, but given that he practically lives here himself, Snowball has become a ward of this household as much as the one Sirius _actually_ belongs to.

He gives the small grey owl his letter, spending only a moment to watch him take off, then heads back down to the kitchen. Sirius is exactly where James left him, making faces down at a giggling Harry. When James re-enters the room, Sirius looks up with a raised eyebrow.

“We can try to figure this out before he gets back to us,” James decides. “He’ll be blown away, won’t he, if he comes and we’ve already got a perfect cake in the oven?”

Sirius shrugs. “All right, then. I’ll watch. My hands are full, y’see.”

“He won’t break if you put him down,” James says impatiently. “Help me out, won’t you?”

“Your own _son_ , James! Do you even hear yourself? Don’t listen to him, Harry, Uncle Paddy’ll look after you.” He shoots James a wink. “Give me a shout if you need me.”

With that, he makes his way to the sitting room and seats himself on the floor. Exasperated, James watches as he lowers Harry down in front of him and promptly begins to ignore James entirely.

“Whatever,” he mutters. “Git. I don’t need your help. Let’s see, here…”

But it is no good; he is still just as lost as before. He knows that flour and sugar are essential ingredients, and yet he’s certain there’s supposed to something keeping the dry ingredients together. Water? No, there should be eggs too, shouldn’t there? But that can’t be _all_ there is. Something that’s supposed to add flavour, right?

Perhaps the most frustrating part of it is how very different this is from _cooking_. They ought to be similar, and yet he feels entirely lost here. Eventually, he steps back, frowning.

From the other room, Sirius asks, “Giving up already?”

“You’re one to talk,” James retorts, whirling around to glare at him. “I don’t imagine you’d be doing better than I am—”

“I never said I would be!”

“Why don’t we trade places, then, huh? I’ll watch Harry and _you_ can make this stupid thing.”

“You’re overreacting,” Sirius informs him. “Also, someone’s knocking at the door.”

“Huh?” But as he listens, he hears the knocking too. Relieved, he makes his way past Sirius to get to the door and open it up, revealing a startled-looking Remus.

“What’s wrong?” Remus demands. “You said there was an emergency—”

From behind him, Sirius lets out a bark of laughter. “Emergency! Good one, Prongs, really—”

“So, there’s no emergency?” Remus asks warily.

“There _is_ ,” James snaps. “You can help, can’t you? I have no idea what I’m doing!”

“Guess it depends what I’m helping _with_.”

“A cake,” Sirius declares. “Harry’s birthday is tomorrow, you know.”

“I don’t see any smoke,” Remus says, uncertain. “What’s the problem?”

“Just help, won’t you?” James urges. “C’mon, Moony, you know you want to—"

“What, with _baking_?” Remus shakes his head. “You’re mad. Why do you think I’d be any better than you?” But he is stepping past the threshold and closing the door behind him anyway, toeing off his shoes.

“Well, you must be better than Padfoot, at least. Come on, just tell me what you think I should do, we can figure it out as we go. I just can’t let Lily come home to _nothing_.”

“She probably wouldn’t be upset,” Remus points out.

James stops, turning to face him seriously. “Listen, Moony, I’ve known you for ages, but you don’t understand. She’ll never let me live it down! If I mess this up, I’ll be hearing about it ‘til Harry’s seventeen—and then _he’ll_ make fun of me too, you know, even though _he_ won’t remember it! So just help me out, won’t you? Then at least if something goes wrong, it’s not _all_ my fault.”

“Married life hasn’t been kind to you,” Sirius says gravely. “Well, Moony? Do you hear the man or what? It’s a desperate situation!”

Remus rolls his eyes. “Clearly. Fine, then, but I’ve never really baked, either, you know. Don’t you have a recipe or something?”

James shakes his head. “Lily probably doesn’t need one, so she figured I wouldn’t either. And I thought—well, it can’t be _hard_ , can it? Or, maybe it is, I dunno, that’s why I need help.”

“You know,” Remus muses, “Peter might know what to do. You ought to ask him.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. Look, I’ll go see if he’s about, then we can all work together.”

“Good idea,” Sirius chirps. “It’ll be great. We all put our heads together on this thing, it’ll work out in no time.”

“You haven’t done anything!”

“I have so. Moral support, Prongsie. Well, what are you waiting for, Moony? Go get him!”

Remus sighs, but his lips are twitching slightly. “Sure, all right, then. Ten minutes. If he can’t come, we’ll try something else.”

And just as soon as he arrived, he leaves again. With the door closed behind him, James returns to the sitting room and flops down on the floor beside Sirius. Harry crawls over to him, but shortly becomes distracted as the cat jumps down from its perch on the loveseat.

“You really could have just told her,” Sirius says. “She’d make fun of you either way, I imagine.”

“Maybe,” James concedes. “But it’s just a small thing, isn’t it? She already does so much. Besides, he’ll never have a first birthday again, so I think we ought to make it good one, don’t you?”

“He’s not going to remember, though. You said so yourself.”

“It’s not for him so much as it’s for us.” James shrugs. “You know, so we can take pictures and all that. He’s not gonna be this cute forever.”

“Well, yeah, if he grows up to look like _you_.”

“Shut up,” but he’s grinning when he jabs his elbow teasingly into Sirius’s side.

“Well, it’s true! Between the two of us, you’re not exactly the pretty one, are you? And it’s not looking so good, James, you know, I bet if we went through your mum’s photobooks we’d find pictures of you that look just like he does now.”

“He’ll start to take after Lily more when he gets older,” James insists. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t inherit my eyesight.”

“So many things wrong with you,” Sirius says mournfully. “Well, let’s get back to the kitchen. We’ve got a cake to bake!”

He rises and crosses the floor to where they have watched Harry crawl away to, then leans down and scoops the baby up. James follows after them, a little slower, and when he arrives back in the kitchen he finds Sirius surveying the area thoughtfully.

“Aren’t you supposed to put milk in these things?” he finally wonders aloud. “I swear that’s what you do, sure I’ve heard that somewhere.”

“Who would have told you that, anyway?” Despite his scepticism, however, James retrieves the milk from the fridge. “Your parents never really struck me at the type to enjoy sweets.”

“Maybe if they had they would have been more pleasant,” Sirius grumbles. “But no. Someone in Hogwarts. Er…Mary Macdonald? Or—no, maybe Alice, actually. You should have owled _her_ , Prongs. Today is their kid’s birthday. I bet she baked one hell of a cake for it.”

“Yeah, Lily told me. Neville. They’ll be in the same year, you now. Maybe someday they’ll celebrate their birthdays together.”

“Right, right. And probably with a Weasley too. And they’ll all be Gryffindors and best mates or something too, yeah?”

James shudders. “You know by the time he’s that old we’ll be _thirty_ , right? I’d rather not think about it myself, thanks.”

“You’re being dramatic. Thirty is still pretty young, long as I don’t get married.”

“Marriage is fine.”

“For you, sure.”

James opens his mouth to respond, but doesn’t get a chance to as the front door opens and closes again, admitting two sets of feet. In short time, Remus leads Peter into the kitchen too, and stops.

“Remus told me what’s going on,” Peter says seriously. “I think I can help, if you just follow my directions.”

Sirius looks doubtful. “Wormy, you’ve never given _directions_ to someone in your life.”

Peter flushes. “Well…suggestions, then. James, get some bowls. I’ll walk you through it all.”

James figures that, whether Peter really knows what he’s doing or not, the best he can do is try. If it’s a failure, it’ll probably still be better than whatever James would have concocted on his own, and so it is assuredly better than nothing.

Remus and Sirius stand back watching—or maybe cooing over Harry, as they both tend to do at times—while James hastens to follow every one of Peter’s words. It’s all going very well until he drops the bag of flour.

Three things happen very quickly:

The bag practically _explodes_ , coating the whole kitchen floor in powdery white. Peter steps forward, wand in hand, to clean it up, but instead slips and lands flat on his arse. Then, to top it all off, the baby starts crying.

“Oh, great,” James groans. “For fuck’s sake—”

“Do you have more?” Peter asks from the floor, voice raised to be heard over Harry.

“Don’t reckon we do.” He checks, though, each and every cupboard. They are each as lacking in flour as the last. Finally, he turns back to Peter and offers a hand out to him, hoisting him up and—

 _Slipping_ , right back down to the floor with him.

Spluttering, James hastens to sit up, patting his pockets for his wand, but he must have left it in the other room or something. He’s always doing that, to Lily’s eternal irritation.

Peter gets up slower, a hand at his back and face contorted in pain. It can’t be _that_ bad, though. Sure, James only fell once, but it wasn’t so bad. Really, it was a pretty soft landing, considering all the flour.

From the kitchen table, Sirius and Remus work to quiet Harry, to no avail. Remus looks to James with desperate eyes.

“What do we _do_?”

“I don’t know! Merlin, would someone clean this _up_?”

“I’ve got it,” Peter manages, finally crawling to his feet. Just as he’s raising his wand, though, there comes another sound:

The door opening.

“James?” It clicks shut behind her. “Where are you?”

There really is no time to act. She’s there in an instant, wide green eyes surveying the kitchen. Nobody speaks, though Harry continues to cry, and then she says, “Er, I see we have visitors?”

James grabs blindly for the counter and pulls himself up. Wordlessly, he approaches the table and scoops Harry up. Just as soon as he started crying, he quiets, and James walks the short distance from the table to where Lily is standing, seemingly caught somewhere between amusement and exasperation.

“We were baking a cake,” he says, handing the baby over to her.

She takes him in her arms, cradling him close, on hand running soothingly over his dark hair. “Well, I’m not sure why it would take four of you, but go on. I hear throwing the flour on the floor before putting it in the mix really enhances the flavour.”

For a moment, there is nothing.

Sirius is the first to break the silence, laughing. “See? She’s not even upset, mate. Just admit it.”

Lily shifts slightly, holding Harry against her hip. “Admit what? That you can’t bake a cake?”

“I can so!” He inhales sharply, then sneezes as flour tickles the inside of his nose. “ _Ugh_ , look, it was an _accident_ —”

“That happened because he can’t bake a cake,” Remus supplies. _Unhelpfully_.

“He was doing fine,” Peter protests. “But we’ll need more flour.”

Lily snorts, then doubles over in laughter. Once she straightens up again, wheezing, she says, “You could have just _told_ me.”

“He has his pride, Evans.” Sirius rises and comes to James side, clapping him on the shoulder. “But maybe for Harry’s next birthday, you might want to make the cake.”

Her lips twitch. “Noted. You know, though…it’s not really such a big deal. It’ll only take a couple hours. I’ll do it later. And, er, show you what to do, if you want.”

James sighs, but offers her a weak smile. “All right,” he agrees. “But, ah, well, I didn’t realize how late it was already.”

She shrugs, then looks around the kitchen with bright eyes. “Clean this up and you guys can stay for tea, if you’d like. I at least know James can cook a decent meal.”

He flushes at this, which only makes her laugh again. Without another word, she’s turned around, cooing at the baby.

“Could’ve been a lot worse,” Sirius remarks once she’s gone. “But I think I get what you’re saying now. She’s not gonna let you forget about this.”

“You might deserve it,” Remus muses.

“It was just an accident,” Peter points out feebly.

James pinches the bridge of his nose, wishing he could simply will his shame away. Finally, he drops his hands again and looks around at the others.

“Well,” he says, “let’s get cleaned up, then. Can’t say we didn’t try.”

Sirius snickers. “That’s right. First time for everything, mate. Hopefully it’ll be your last time, too.”

James doesn’t say so, but he can’t quite help thinking the very same thing.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are always appreciated! xx
> 
> (p.s. catch me on twitter [@laphicets](https://twitter.com/laphicets) or tumblr [@kohakhearts](https://kohakhearts.tumblr.com) for writing updates. i also sometimes take writing requests on both!)


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